What would have been the latest reasonable POD that would prevent mass industrialization?
Something I've tried to come up with involves the English Civil War going a little differently, leading to Protestant absolutism in the second half of the 17c. The new regime closes down the Royal Society because who would dare put Copernicus's authority over that of the Holy Spirit's, etc.; simultaneously, the Thirty Years' War also ends up a lot worse on the fringes of the HRE, destroying the Netherlands and creating less science-friendly governments in Sweden and Poland. The Scientific Revolution doesn't really happen - there's some tinkering, but nothing like what happened in the second half of the 17c in OTL.
Settlement of North America continues, and eventually rebels there form independent kingdoms, like New England, Virginia, etc. The Plains Indians managed to attain technological parity with the settlers, and either form their own equal kingdoms or are the equivalent of the Mongols and Jurchens to the settlers' imperial China. In the American South, the population isn't much lower than in OTL - even today, the density is about comparable to the denser preindustrial states in Europe of comparable climate. There was explosive population growth in the 18-19c, but in the 20c, as population density began approaching carrying capacity, mortality rates rose to European levels. In Europe, there was some population growth, but far less than in OTL - Britain's population is 12 million, and urban child mortality remains more than half, as it was in OTL's 17-18c.
Global trade continues, but doesn't lead to more globalization than existed in OTL's 18c. China probably overthrew the Qing in the 19c or 20c and replaced it with a state as autocratic and conservative as the Ming, India may have reunified or it may be disunited like medieval Europe, looking back to the Mughal Empire as a golden age. Nowhere in the world are wages a large multiple of subsistence, except occasionally in imperial capitals and in areas with Malthusian population pressure that recently depopulated.
Something I've tried to come up with involves the English Civil War going a little differently, leading to Protestant absolutism in the second half of the 17c. The new regime closes down the Royal Society because who would dare put Copernicus's authority over that of the Holy Spirit's, etc.; simultaneously, the Thirty Years' War also ends up a lot worse on the fringes of the HRE, destroying the Netherlands and creating less science-friendly governments in Sweden and Poland. The Scientific Revolution doesn't really happen - there's some tinkering, but nothing like what happened in the second half of the 17c in OTL.
Settlement of North America continues, and eventually rebels there form independent kingdoms, like New England, Virginia, etc. The Plains Indians managed to attain technological parity with the settlers, and either form their own equal kingdoms or are the equivalent of the Mongols and Jurchens to the settlers' imperial China. In the American South, the population isn't much lower than in OTL - even today, the density is about comparable to the denser preindustrial states in Europe of comparable climate. There was explosive population growth in the 18-19c, but in the 20c, as population density began approaching carrying capacity, mortality rates rose to European levels. In Europe, there was some population growth, but far less than in OTL - Britain's population is 12 million, and urban child mortality remains more than half, as it was in OTL's 17-18c.
Global trade continues, but doesn't lead to more globalization than existed in OTL's 18c. China probably overthrew the Qing in the 19c or 20c and replaced it with a state as autocratic and conservative as the Ming, India may have reunified or it may be disunited like medieval Europe, looking back to the Mughal Empire as a golden age. Nowhere in the world are wages a large multiple of subsistence, except occasionally in imperial capitals and in areas with Malthusian population pressure that recently depopulated.